Wednesday, 16 March 2016

Pope Francis to join Bieber and co. on Instagram

VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis will make his Instagram debut on Saturday,
joining the likes of Justin Bieber and Cristiano Ronaldo on the
image-sharing forum under the handle Franciscus, the Vatican confirmed
on Wednesday.

The date for the pontiff's debut on the
celebrity-dominated social medium was chosen by the 79-year-old himself
as it marks the third anniversary of his inauguration as the leader of
the world's 1.2 billion Catholics.

The move represents the latest plank of a Vatican social media strategy
designed to ensure Francis's message reaches a maximum number of
believers and non-believers across the world with particular focus on
the younger generation.

Francis is already a major player on
Twitter. Under the @Pontifex handle he tweets in nine languages,
including Latin, with the English account followed by nearly nine
million people and the Spanish one by more than 11 million.

The
move to join Instagram has been anticipated for some time as it is now
bigger and faster-growing than Twitter with some 400 million users
worldwide.

Kevin Systrom, Instagram's CEO and co-founder, met the
pontiff at the Vatican last month, later revealing they had discussed
"the power of images to unite people across different cultures and
languages."

In a post on his own Instagram account, Systrom also said: "It was by far one of the most memorable experiences of my life!"

Francis
joined the Twittersphere four days after his March 2013 election with
what has become his trademark appeal to believers to "pray for me."

The
central importance of prayer has been a recurring theme of the tweets
that have followed, at a rate of a little under one a day.

Some
have been barely comprehensible to non-Catholics such as: "The
Sacraments, especially Confession and the Eucharist, are privileged
places of encountering Christ."

But it has not all been theology. He has also used the medium to react
to global events like Typhoon Hiayan/Yolanda, or voice his views on the
social issues of the day.

Francis has also demonstrated a nice
line in homespun tips for living, such as: "I cannot imagine a Christian
who does not know how to smile."

To date, however, his Twitter feed has been short on images with only two photographs and one short video clip uploaded.

And
given that he nearly always wears the same clothes and spends most of
his time in one place, generating an interesting photo stream for
Instagram will present some challenges for his media team.